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With Marcelle gone back to New Brunswick and Jeremy at work during the day, I knew I wanted to focus on painting during our time in Baddeck. Cheticamp and the Cabot Trail left me with so much inspiration and ideas, I could barely contain myself. I locked myself away (ok, that’s a bit dramatic, but whatever!) in our cabin and painted straight for two days. It felt great to get all of my ideas out of my head and onto a canvas! My goal for the rest of the week was to try my hand out at en plein air painting.

En Plein Air… A fancy way of saying…

“In the open air” or “outdoors”. Essentially, it’s painting outside! It’s pretty common nowadays, but it wasn’t so until the mid-18th century. Around that time, a couple of different art movements (namely, Impressionism) started putting a strong importance on natural light. They ventured outside to do their painting, instead of sticking to the studio. It became even more popular in the 1840s once paints in tubes were introduced. Prior to this, artists had to mix their paints with dry pigment powder and linseed oil (can you imagine?!).

A great tool for plein air painting is a pochade box. I picked one up at The Paint Spot before our trip after chatting about them with my friend Crystal (who is an amazing artist!). They’re basically a compact box that carries art supplies and the inside lid of the box is used as a mini easel to paint on. Super handy.

These are some of the painting spots I discovered over the week:

Smokey Mountain

Super windy, really hot - this was one of the most challenging spots. But so beautiful!

In and around Baddeck

North River

I drove down a random dirt road without knowing where i was heading when I found this magical place. I hiked down a steep path for about 20 minutes and spent the afternoon sitting on a comfy rock.

Big pond Beach

I had never been to Big Pond. In fact, I didn't really know much about it except that it's where Rita McNeil is from. Turns out it's a great little spot for some painting!